Cooling towers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York recently tested positive for Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease.
The three institutions join a list of more than 70 buildings—including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—affected by a recent outbreak on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Addresses associated with the museums appear on a document released by the city on Tuesday (14 July) of locations where the bacteria has been found. All four museums have already cleaned their cooling towers, and their buildings remain safe for visitors and workers.
Legionnaire’s disease, a severe form of pneumonia, is spread by breathing in fine water droplets that contain the bacteria Legionella. It is not contagious through person-to-person contact. Cooling towers act as vents for a building’s air-conditioning system, pushing the hot air outdoors; they do not interact with its water supply. Outbreaks of the disease are common during New York’s hot and humid summers—Legionella thrives in the stagnant warm water that collects in cooling towers—but this appears to be the first time museums in the ritzy Upper East Side neighbourhood have been affected.
“The cooling towers at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum tested positive for the presence of Legionella bacteria in a PCR test,” a spokesperson for the museum tells The Art Newspaper. “Out of an abundance of caution and to take mitigation and preventive steps around the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side, Cooper Hewitt was closed to the public on Monday 13 July and Tuesday 14 July. The cleaning of the cooling towers has now been completed, and the museum reopened to the public on Wednesday 15 July.”
A spokesperson for the Met said in a statement: “Along with several other buildings in the neighborhood, we were notified earlier this week by the Department of Health that testing detected a trace amount of Legionella bacteria in our cooling-tower system. In accordance with New York City guidelines and our established health and safety protocols, we immediately initiated—and have now completed—the required remediation. Based on guidance from the city and public-health experts, the museum has been and continues to be safe for staff and visitors to occupy, and we are open today as regularly scheduled. We will continue to coordinate closely with the Department of Health as needed.”
The Jewish Museum reiterated many of these points for its own affected cooling towers. “The Jewish Museum has been actively monitoring this issue in partnership with the Department of Health (DOH),” a museum spokesperson says. “The cooling towers on the museum’s roof were cleaned and disinfected immediately upon receiving preliminary test results, putting us in full compliance and good standing. The DOH confirmed no additional risk inside the museum, and operations can continue uninterrupted as normal.”
The New York City Health Department has confirmed 64 cases, 13 hospitalisations and 40 discharged hospitalisations linked to Legionnaire’s disease. No deaths have been reported. City inspectors continue to sweep the Upper East Side, checking hundreds of cooling towers in order to mitigate the issue.
